Cricket's Gray Area Hard to Police

Tampering With Ball Usually Draws Lenient Punishments

ENLARGE

South Africa's Faf du Plessis holds the ball during the fourth day of the second Test match against Pakistan on Saturday.
Reuters

By

Richard Lord

Oct. 30, 2013 4:55 p.m. ET

Ball-tampering is cricket's point of cognitive dissonance. A serious offense on paper, and one that inevitably generates acres of newsprint whenever there's an infraction, the characteristically lenient punishments handed out to offenders reflect the widespread suspicion that it's a fairly lightweight sin, one that isn't really a threat to the integrity of the game.

The issue reared its head, as it periodically does, when South Africa's
Faf du Plessis
was found guilty on the third day of the second Test against Pakistan at Dubai last week of rubbing the ball in the vicinity of the zipper on his trouser pocket, potentially roughing up one side of it. The point of that would be to keep one side of the ball dry and shiny while allowing the condition of the other side to deteriorate, causing the ball to reverse-swing earlier.

As well as five bonus runs being awarded to the opposition (not a big deal in the context of a game that South Africa won by an innings and 92 runs), du Plessis was also fined 50% of his match fee, the minimum possible punishment for a so-called level-two offense under the International Cricket Council's Code of Conduct. He could have been fined up to 100% of his match fee and banned for up to two international games, which is what happened to former Pakistan captain
Shahid Afridi
when he was caught on camera twice biting the ball during a One Day International against Australia in 2010.

Pakistan Cricket Board interim Chairman
Najam Sethi
tweeted after the recent match that he would be seeking clarification from the ICC over a perceived inconsistency in the punishments. But the discrepancy in sentencing might also be a product of increasingly lenient attitudes to ball-tampering.

"After discussions with Mr. du Plessis, he has elected not to contest that charge,"
David Boon
of the Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees said in a statement last week. "But I am also satisfied that this was not part of a deliberate and/or prolonged attempt to unfairly manipulate the condition of the ball, and that the imposition of a fine of 50% of his match fee is appropriate considering the circumstances."

The bigger issue is determining just how serious an offense ball-tampering really is. Working on the ball in ways that push the boundaries of acceptability is nearly universal, which makes it both hard to police and hard to get particularly angry about. The problem is that, according to the game's Law 42.3, improving the condition of the ball in certain ways is perfectly legitimate.

Polishing the ball is fine, as is the use of sweat and saliva. Teams can also use a towel to dry it and can remove mud under the supervision of the umpire, who will sometimes use scissors to trim bits of the seam that are coming off.

With some degree of external manipulation of the ball allowed, it's hardly surprising that players constantly try to push the boundaries, because they have plenty to gain: Ball-tampering can aid the ball's swing by making one side of a ball harder, or one side rougher. Picking at the seam to make it more pronounced and uneven can lead to greater variations in bounce and movement once it hits the pitch.

Following the du Plessis incident, it emerged that the ICC has banned zips on players' clothing from 2015. But there are plenty of other rough patches on their kit that could be used for the same purpose.

This is just one of many reasons why ball-tampering is almost impossible to police. Sunscreen, hair products and other liquids and gels can be applied either to the person or to clothing before play and then discreetly transferred onto the ball. Even saliva isn't innocent: Teams have been known to eat candy before and during play for the sugar's alleged hardening effect on the ball. Fielders have even been told off by the umpires for deliberately throwing the ball in to the wicketkeeper so that it bounces in a dusty area to rough it up. Good luck to the umpire who wants to prove something like that is being done deliberately.

Ball-tampering allegations tend to follow any team that is expert at reverse swing, from the Pakistan side that first mastered it in the 1970s with
Safraz Nawaz
and
Imran Khan,
to their compatriots in the 1990s (notably
Wasim Akram
and
Waqar Younis
), to the England team of the mid-1980s.

Before Afridi, England captain
Michael Atherton
was fined in 1994 for having dirt in his pocket, which he claimed was there to help dry his hands but which television cameras caught him apparently rubbing into the ball.

Tampering allegations, with their implication of cheating, have even ruined Tests on two occasions. In 2001, a punishment handed down to
Sachin Tendulkar
in a game against South Africa caused India to reject match referee
Mike Denness
for the next Test, with the ICC subsequently revoking the game's Test status. And in 2006, the Pakistan team refused to return to the field against England at The Oval after being handed a five-run tampering penalty, more or less ending the career of umpire
Darrell Hair.

No team wants its collective sense of fair play impugned like that, but because some degree of work on the ball is legal, tampering becomes an ethical gray area. Everyone does it a little bit, the thinking goes, and the ball gets scuffed anyway, as a natural consequence of use. So players might argue that they're just helping the process along.

But there's outcry as soon as someone is caught, even when, as in the case of du Plessis, the match referee says he didn't do it on purpose. Du Plessis's punishment suggests that the offense isn't as serious as it's made out to be—and it certainly isn't harsh enough to dissuade many people. Bowlers are disadvantaged by so many aspects of the modern game, from bigger bats to shorter boundaries, and widening the parameters of what constitutes legal work on the ball could be a way of evening things up. No one wants players hacking at the ball with a knife, but certain types of ball-tampering, particularly those intended to rough up the ball, are more or less impossible to stop. It might be time to stop pretending they don't exist and make them legal.

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